STAR WARS UNSEEN
COLIN TREVORROW’S DUEL OF THE FATES IS ONLY THE LATEST UNTOLD TALE OF THE SKYWALKERS. SFX INVESTIGATES THE STAR WARS ADVENTURES THAT NEVER MADE THE SCREEN.
Many Bothans died to bring you this information.
AS A CERTAIN Swampdwelling Jedi Master once taught us, “Always in motion is the future.” But in Hollywood the past is equally in a state of flux. Every completed film trails countless possibilities behind it: discarded drafts of screenplays; abandoned storytelling choices; dead end plot avenues; characters and scenes that are tweaked, reshaped or deleted. Movies are built on the backs of what-ifs and might-have-beens. The ghosts of the great unmade haunt the screen, concealed between the frames of the final product.
“For me, it becomes an obsession with what could have been,” says Stephen Scarlata, co-host of the Best Movies Never Made podcast and producer of Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary on the cult filmmaker’s attempt to bring Frank Herbert’s epic SF novel to the screen. “I just need to know everything and put it together, the best I can in my head. It’s that mystery and how it would have shaped the landscape of cinema.”
About this time last year an alternate vision for Star Wars Episode IX tumbled through a crack in hyperspace. Jurassic World writer/ director Colin Trevorrow was Lucasfilm’s original choice to land the ending of the trilogy of trilogies. Collaborating with Derek Connolly (Jurassic World, Kong: Skull Island), he delivered a draft of the screenplay in December 2016, only to leave the project by September 2017, replaced by JJ Abrams.
Trevorrow’s exit was covered by that catch-all movie industry smokescreen: creative differences. “Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going,” Lucasfilm supremo Kathleen Kennedy told io9 in December 2019. “Like any development process, it was only in the development that we’re looking at a first draft and realising that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn’t feel was really quite where we wanted it to go.”
Some said the bruising critical response to Trevorrow’s family drama The Book Of Henry
– released June 2017 – contributed to him departing that galaxy far, far away. “I can’t really speculate on it,” he stated a year later. It’s clear, however, that the decision was wounding, the forcible amputation of a passion project. A lifelong Star Wars fan, he described the experience as “a very personal loss.”
In February 2020 what was claimed to be Trevorrow and Connolly’s screenplay finally found its way online, posted by a Bothan spy on a Star Wars subreddit. Purported concept art followed, its legitimacy soon verified by Trevorrow himself. Kylo locked blazing lightsabers with Darth Vader; Threepio cradled a seemingly mortally damaged Artoo; Chewbacca seized a Knight of Ren by the throat. These images were true splinters of the mind’s eye, the closest any of that unmade, built-to-be-imagined draft would come to concrete reality.
Dated 16 December 2016, the screenplay for Duel Of The Fates offers a tantalising counterpoint to The Rise Of Skywalker. There’s already an invocatory power in the choice of title – that was the name John Williams gave to the thrilling, choral-led piece that scored the showdown between Darth Maul and Qui-gon Jinn, a sequence that always gleamed amidst the wreckage of disappointment that was The Phantom Menace.
“The moment I heard Duel Of The Fates, I was into it,” Stephen Scarlata tells SFX. “It had a much bigger impact on me compared to hearing the title The Rise Of Skywalker.”
As the traditional opening crawl informs us, “The iron grip of the FIRST ORDER has spread
Gleefully trades in cauterised flesh, blinded blood-weeping eyes and war-ravaged ruins
to the farthest reaches of the galaxy.” Hux is no snivelling spy here. He’s Chancellor, presiding over public executions of Resistance fighters – executions accomplished with lightsaber guillotines, no less (there’s a lot of this full-blooded, cosmic-gothic vibe in the script, which gleefully trades in cauterised flesh, blinded, blood-weeping eyes and war-ravaged ruins). Trevorrow swells the First Order’s ranks with Mechtrooper variants and chrome-armoured Brutetroopers, mercenaries more vicious than standard stormtroopers, and there’s an intriguing revelation that the jack-booted heirs to the Empire are secretly in league with alien warlords. Far from a resurrected Big Bad, Palpatine is simply a posthumous hologram cameo.
SHOCK AND ORE
The story begins in classic heroes-on-a-mission style, with a Resistance strike against the orbital Kuat shipyards. This industrial backdrop highlights the exploitation of migrant workers on Kuat’s moon, source of the precious ore that powers the First Order fleet. Operating undercover, Rey’s disguised as a Tusken Raider – surely a long way from home – and is soon revealed to be in possession of a double-bladed blue lightsaber, constructed from the remnants of Anakin’s weapon. “I can’t help but be in love with this visual,” says Stephen Scarlata. “Especially comparing Luke being a full-on Jedi knight in Return Of The Jedi, I was happy to see that Rey was following in that path.” In a knowing callback to A New Hope, Poe gets to cry, “Let’s blow this thing and go home!”
Kylo Ren, meanwhile, is on a quest of his own. Now cutting a ragged, bearded figure, he’s come to Darth Vader’s castle on Mustafar, “a forgotten, decrepit cathedral” originally intended to appear in The Empire Strikes Back and finally brought to the screen in 2016’s Rogue One. In this decaying fortress he finds the ancient Sith device he’s searching for, a holocron that will lead him to Tor Valum, the Sith Master that instructed Palpatine. The holocron is intended for Vader’s eyes only – realising it’s in the presence of an intruder, it zaps Kylo with an “invasive pulse of energy”,
disfiguring him. He later hides his mutilated face behind a newly forged mask, completing the Vader parallels (if rather spoiling the uniqueness of the character).
The Resistance are hunting an artefact of their own (it’s easy to see how this treasure quest plotting influenced the ultimate shape of The Rise Of Skywalker, with its search for the Sith wayfinder). This particular plot coupon is a Kyber crystal beacon, located in the ruins of a Jedi temple on Coruscant. A piece of old school Old Republic tech undetectable by the First Order, it beams a message from Leia, imploring the galaxy for help: “Send your fastest ships, all your warriors. Our voices will not be silenced. We can no longer live in the shadow of the First Order. We must step into the light.” It’s essentially a supersized riff on Leia’s holographic plea to Kenobi in A New Hope.
For all that Leia’s used as a symbol of nostalgia in Duel Of The Fates – one piece of concept art finds her silver-haired and white-robed, stooping to deliver a message to BB-8 in another homage to the original Star Wars – she’s better served than in The Rise Of Skywalker. Trevorrow had an advantage over Abrams, of course – Carrie Fisher was still alive when he wrote the screenplay. But surviving icon Mark Hamill is equally well served. The Force ghost of Luke actively haunts Kylo, making good on his Last Jedi promise to “see you around, kid.”
Luke also continues to tutor Rey, described in the script as “A grown woman. Powerful. Strong.” She has none of the self-doubt seen in Rise but experiences recurring nightmares of Kylo, exacerbated by the Force bond between them. In the concept art she’s clad in black, recalling Luke’s costume in Return Of The
Jedi. She takes on the
Knights of Ren, killing their Darksaber-wielding leader, Hattaska Ren, as she succumbs to the kind of “deep, vengeful anger” that comes complete with some Dark Side-branded purple Force lightning.
“I’ve been fascinated by the Knights of Ren since The Force Awakens,” says Stephen Scarlata. “In the Fates draft, they feel much more badass and like true mini-bosses. It feels more fitting for Rey to square off against them rather than Kylo Ren.” Kylo tracks down Tor Valum on the battle-shattered, skull-littered world of Remnicore, “a cold black planet veined with silver.” The six-eyed Sith Master is one of the more memorable creations in the screenplay, a spindly, vampiric Anti-yoda, “sinew and muscle pulled tight” in his cadaverous 7000-year-old frame. Tor Valum conjures a spectre of Darth Vader for Kylo to fight – an echo of Luke’s vision in the cave in Empire
– and is ultimately killed by the ambitious young Supreme Leader, but not before revealing the whereabouts of
planet Mortis, location of “the well of the Living Force, the source of the galaxy’s birth.”
BLINDED BY THE LIGHTSABER
The final act of Duel Of The Fates cuts between Coruscant and Mortis. The former Imperial homeworld becomes the site of mass insurrection as the poor and oppressed are liberated and Finn rallies Stormtroopers to change sides. Lando Calrissian’s volunteer fleet arrives, answering Leia’s call, and starship skirmishes fill the skies, with Chewie piloting an X-wing (can a Wookiee even fit in that cockpit?). As Coruscant falls, Hux realises that he has “lost the star wars” – mercifully that’s only a script direction, not a cringe-inducing line of dialogue. He impales himself with a lightsaber, part of his treasured collection of Force-sensitive relics. The blade is purple, hinting that it once belonged to none other than Mace Windu.
“Looking at the Duel Of The Fates storyboards, that final battle on Coruscant feels really theatric,” says Stephen Scarlata. “When Hux commits suicide with a lightsaber, the background image seems more epic in scope, which I feel the third act of The Rise Of Skywalker was lacking. It also feels much more of a fitting and powerful end to this character.”
It’s now that the capital of Coruscant is revealed as one giant, concealed starship, rising to dwarf the burning city like an Independence Day invasion vessel. However Rose Tico – who’s infinitely better served in this screenplay than in The Rise Of Skywalker – has rejigged the navicomputer so that the ship smashes into a planet as it attempts the leap to hyperspace.
Rey believes Kylo can be redeemed even as he becomes the most powerful Sith in history. They fight on the snow-crowned peak of the Temple of Mortis, ancient statues toppling around them. Now Rey learns that Kylo killed her parents on Snoke’s orders. They weren’t junk traders – but they weren’t the spawn of Palpatine, either. Her family name is Solana (insert audience shrug as appropriate).
Kylo blinds Rey with a slash of his lightsaber. “Goodbye, scavenger,” he tells her. Stepping into the temple, he confronts the ghost of Luke.
But Rey rejoins the fray, “Blind, bruised, determined.” In the script’s breakthrough philosophical move, she has embraced the twin polarities of the Force. “I am the darkness,” she says. “And I am the light.” In this desperate final duel Kylo seizes an advantage, using Tor Valum’s teaching to steal the lifeforce from her body. Sensing Rey’s imminent demise, Leia reaches out across the stars, persuading Kylo to return the stolen corporeal energy – at the cost of his own life. Mother, clearly, knows best. As the screenplay states, “With a look that could be perceived as love, BEN SOLO DIES.”
Exhausted, on the edge of death, Rey’s offered the chance to share the afterlife with the shades of Luke, Yoda and Obi-wan. She opts to return to the realm of flesh and blood instead. The final scene finds her on the planet Modesta – perhaps a sly reference to Modesto, the Californian city where George Lucas first dreamed of escape – and the homestead where she will teach a whole new generation the ways of the Force.
For Stephen Scarlata, Duel Of The Fates exists as a glorious what-if. “Overall the script won me over,” he says. “It adds fresh ideas while also calling back to the previous films in a respectful way, especially having a hologram of General Leia calling out for help to all the galaxy. I can’t gush about this script enough. I am bummed that this version was never made.
“Kylo Ren feels overall more of a real villain in this draft, and his character is so much stronger. The climactic battle we get between Kylo and Rey at the end is epic. Rey’s dual blue lightsaber against Kylo’s red crossguard lightsaber is a visual I have implanted in my head and could have seen on the film’s poster art. Losing this lightsaber duel is devastating. And Rey being blinded by Kylo’s lightsaber and blindfolding herself for the rest of the battle is a Rocky moment an audience would have gone crazy watching.”
It adds fresh ideas while also calling back to the previous films in a respectful way